EDGEWORTH, Maria. ~ Tales of Fashionable Life. London: [S. Hamilton, Weybridge, vol 1; Wood and Innes, vol. 2; W. Pople, vol. 3] for J. Johnson, 1809.
3 vols, 8vo (167 × 100 mm), pp. vii, [3], 400; [2], 338; [2], 269, [1], first and last volumes bound without half-titles. A couple of gatherings in each volume just spring, fore-edges consequently very slightly frayed. but all secure. Contemporary tree calf, gilt spines with black morocco labels. Rubbed, joints cracked but secure. A good copy.
First collected edition of the first series of Tales of Fashionable Life, Edgeworth’s most ambitious literary project. containing Ennui, Almeria, Madame de Fleury, The Dun, Manoeuvring. In his preface, Richard Lovell Edgeworth notes his daughter's aim ‘to promote, by all her writings, the progress of education, from the cradle to the grave’, and that the present and envisaged volumes of the series were ‘intended to point out some of those errors, to which the higher classes of society are disposed’. A second series appeared in 1812, for which she received £1050 making her the most commercially successful novelist of her age.